Chapter 4
IV
Awhimper escaped me as I fought to keep consciousness from creeping back. Life refused to depart, but I didn’t want it. I wanted to be with Sylvie.
The dessicated blood married a sour, clammy sweat to my skin. The gashes, just beginning to dry, ripped open with the slightest movements. I lay there, ears straining against the sounds of the room, as I waited for what was coming next.
There was no more music. Only the soft, sinister stir of movement downstairs. Voices. Short thuds. The scrape of something heavy dragging across the floor. Were they moving furniture?
Then footsteps.
Closer. Closer.
Through lidded eyes, the woman appeared.
She moved like a ghost in the half-dark, clean now, with no trace of the feast or the orgy.
A flowing peignoir hung over a short lace nightgown.
Her auburn hair had been brushed and curled again, silky and neat, her skin smooth as porcelain. A different scarf adorned her neck.
Cold fingers pressed against my cracked lips, holding them there to check whether I still respired.
The scent of vanilla soap and sweet, fruity shampoo was an assault. It was the scent of Sylvie after a shower. But beneath the perfume, there was a faint, grounding trace of damp soil.
“She is still alive!” she exclaimed, her head snapping toward the door. Her voice was high and sharp, drilling my already pounding head.
The man stood in the doorway, dressed in sweatpants, his torso bare.
“Finish her,” he said in the detached, almost absurd tone of someone telling Alexa to add milk to a grocery list.
I had pleaded for death, yet hearing it pronounced like a verdict brought a terror beyond words. The craving for death was one thing; the anticipation was another. The wait was worse.
“No,” the woman said with a petulant lilt. “We should keep her. For emergencies while we are here. Besides, she’s so pretty, I like black hair and milky skin. Let her be for now. Let us see how long she lasts.”
The man lingered in the doorway a moment longer. The hallway light cast his figure in a harsh illumination.
“Do what you want, but make sure she causes no problems, Ophelia.” Then he disappeared again.
Ophelia. So the monster had a name.
She leaned closer, brushing my cheek. Her touch was gentle, yet it carried the weight of dominance. The master was letting her play with her new toy.
“You heard him,” the madwoman whispered against my jugular. “You are mine.”
They left me chained for the entire day. No water. Sylvie’s body still sprawled out like garbage. I slipped in and out of restless sleep, my dreams fractured and unsteady, forcing me to relive the horrors of the previous night.
In the stagnant heat of the room, a thin, whitish film clouded the surface of Sylvie's eyes. Decay had claimed the blush from her face, leaving her features with a waxy, translucent quality that looked more like sculpted soap than flesh. I anchored my eyes anywhere but on her.
Surrounded by this stench of human bodies and viscera, the room began to corrode.
My body must have emptied while I was out, for my hair was matted with sick.
And above it all was the iron: blood, blood, blood, earthy and rusted, seeping into the fabrics, the furniture, and the very bones of the house.
My chest ached with every shallow pull of air, every microscopic shift. I was still hoping that my body would simply give up. But after a few hours, the blackouts finally stalled; my mind was present once more. With nothing else to do, I began to assess the damage.
Cuts and bites of various depths mapped my skin—on my thighs, my arms, my belly, and my breasts. My nipples were chewed and raw. She hadn’t harmed my genitals; at least, not that I could feel.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony of remembering Sylvie was gone. She was not coming back. I would never hear her voice again. Instead, I might be forced to witness her corpse rotting—watching her lose every human feature, day after day.
At times, I forced myself to look at her, begging for the slightest twitch, but deep down, I knew she was dead.
She was covered in deep, mangled tears—nothing like the shallow gashes they had left on me.
Hers were deeper, more ruthless, carved with feral hunger.
Her neck was a ruinous mess, clinging to the battered remains of a head I had memorised in full to the beauty mark above bow-shaped lips and chickenpox scars on a slender nose. My Sylvie was no more.
Hours passed. I was so thirsty, driven half mad by my surroundings, that I began fading again, slipping into dreams of cool, endless water. A vast lake crowned with a roaring waterfall. In the dream, I drank, drank, drank, desperate for it to satiate me.
Then I returned to myself, and my throat was sandpaper. Every inhale scraped. Each breath felt like fire dragged through me.
The house was too far from anywhere. No one would stop by. There were no neighbors for miles. No one would wonder why Sylvie’s car still sat in the driveway, untouched. No one would notice she hadn’t left for work. Maybe someone would call, but not before Monday. And it was only Saturday.
I didn’t know where my intruders had gone, but the house was suspiciously quiet, save for a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Every once in a while, I thought I caught a whisper, too soft and just out of reach, but when I tried to focus on it, it was gone.
Maybe they had left me here to die. Maybe they were finished with me. Maybe I could run.
But I could barely move, let alone unchain myself or break the iron of the radiator. I would wither here, slowly, forced to watch the body of my beloved spoil.
No. A stubborn instinct, buried deep in the meat of me, insisted they were still here in Whitmore—hiding, resting after the Danse Macabre they had led me through.
The quiet felt wrong, the heavy moment before a new cruelty began.
My end would not be quick. It would come slowly, drawn out, one slice at a time.
The woman would keep me alive only to ruin me again and again until there was nothing left. I should have stabbed her in the eye when I had the chance.
My gaze landed on the bloodied Stanley knife, just beyond my reach. I strained for it, stretching my arm until my scabs popped and fresh blood crawled down my skin. Too far. My fingertips scraped nothing but air.
Useless. Useless.
The gray day dimmed like lights in a theater, slowly and intentionally, so the darkness had time to be noticed. As the last of the daylight faded, the silence went with it. From downstairs came the sound of a door creaking open. Footsteps. I knew it was her.
Ophelia.
Her light tread climbed the stairs, lingered in the corridor, then slipped into the room. She crouched beside me, peering into my face.
“Good heavens, you’re a resilient creature, aren’t you?” she asked. She possessed an old-fashioned, stilted cadence, like she had stepped out of another century or was imitating the clipped tones of early sound films.
Her hands slid under my neck—so gentle, like a lover’s caress. I shivered at the contact. Then, fabric brushed against my throat. Soft. Wrong. Before I could react, it tightened, pulling snug against my skin. My body stiffened, bracing for the crush of strangulation, but it never came.
Instead, the handcuffs fell away.
I turned my head, dazed, and saw a length of shimmering silk leading from my throat to her pale hand. She had leashed me with one of her scarves. Like a dog.
“C’mon,” she said whimsically. “Good girl. Get up.”
I pushed at the floor with trembling hands, dragging myself upward, but my legs buckled beneath me. I collapsed in a heap.
A splash of ice-cold water struck me like a slap.
I choked as it rushed up my nose. My tongue lapped, desperate to catch it, but I trapped only the ghost of droplets before the house swallowed it in front of me.
I tried again, frantic, licking at the film, but it disappeared faster than I could gather it. My body clawed toward life on instinct.
Ophelia tugged the leash, and I lurched forward, my chin scraping over splinters.
“You need to get rid of her before she starts to smell.” She nudged Sylvie’s remains with pedicured toes.
I swayed on barely-there legs and attempted to lift Sylvie into my arms with the hollow obedience carved into me by pain. Her body was so ruined I feared she would come apart in my hands, her head swinging by what looked like a single stubborn strip of skin.
I tried to lift her fully, but her weight betrayed me, slipping through my weakened grip. She fell with a meaty thud that jolted me to the core. Another strangled cry tore from me. I didn’t want to hurt her, even though I understood she was far beyond pain.
I bent once more, hands slick with her blood and mine, as I clung to her with trembling fingers. The words “sorry, sorry, sorry” sputtered against my lips. I didn’t let them out.
Sylvie’s corpse sagged in my arms, the joints loose where they should have held.
For some reason, her body refused the stiffening of the grave.
Already, the enzymes were at work, dissolving the muscle fibers and softening the pulp until it felt grotesquely yielding.
She was coming apart in my arms, her body losing cohesion as I held her.
The turned turf reeked—a sickly, raw scent like a secret meant to remain buried. Stones struck the edge of the shovel with a bone-white ring, forcing me to reach into the muck and pluck them out.
Sweat burned my eyes, stinging and blurring the world into a haze of mud and aching muscles.
My hands, raw and shuddering, grabbed the spade again.
I prayed for my body to give in, to collapse and finally set my spirit free.
But it refused. The flesh and bone held.
My soul felt heavy, trapped stubbornly inside this useless vessel.
And there she was—Sylvie, or what was left of her. She lay at the lip of the grave, her thin fingers dangling over the edge. Every time I dared to look up, there they were, reaching for earth they could no longer feel.
Ophelia bent and touched the late blooms of a hydrangea, heavy and desperate before the winter’s teeth. She caressed the corymb, and it leaned into her palm. How could she admire the flowers while I was here, digging a grave for the woman I had hoped to marry?
I didn’t know how long I had been shovelling. The world had shrunk to this hole, this endless pit of earth and sorrow. My mind was a hollow void. No thoughts, no plans. Just one command: dig.
Dig. Throw the earth out. Dig again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Sylvie would be buried here, next to the gazebo she hated, the one I had wanted to save. Now it would stand over her, a crumbling monument to what had been lost forever.
My mind drifted. I was eleven. My stepdad’s car had struck my dog, Saddy, leaving her whimpering and barely alive.
He was furious, yelling at me even though the car was unharmed.
He blamed me for letting her run loose. She lay there suffering, and there was nothing I could do but hold her, my heart pounding in helpless despair.
He refused to take her to the vet. Instead, he left for work, the slam of the door an exclamation mark on the matter.
The house was empty, except for Saddy and me.
My mother was on a night shift, and by the time she returned, Saddy was gone.
Mother told me to get her out of the house before my stepdad came home.
I had to drag her body into the woods, fighting the unwilling forest floor as I dug.
I cried until the salt burned my throat.
The grave came out so shallow. A few days later, wild animals worked Saddy back to the surface.
The stench of death announced her desecration long before I approached.
“Enough.” A voice fell on me from above.
I drifted slowly from the reverie, the night pressing in. The horror of the present flooded my fevered brain.
God? It’s me. I never believed, but look at me now. Reach into this pit and pull me out. Save me.
But there was never a God.
Ophelia kicked Sylvie’s body. My beloved’s hand jerked lifelessly in response. I flinched, aghast at the lack of sensitivity.
One final shove sent Sylvie into the pit.
The impact knocked me off my feet. I fell on top of her, struck by her chill.
Sylvie had always been warm, even under the thinnest blankets—the reason she hated cuddling in bed.
I had been the one shivering nonstop, my limbs frozen.
Now I burned. I was drenched in sweat; hatred and fury coursing through me.
“Get up,” the woman ordered. “Get out.”
I wanted to resist, to wrench free, but I could not. It was not hypnosis—only exhaustion. Bone-deep, absolute weariness. My body moved before my mind could gather its will, obeying the silent, relentless command.
I stood, staring down at Sylvie’s crumpled form, half-swallowed by night.
When my mind finally caught up, it gave in—not from fear but from complete depletion, too spent to struggle, too hollow to argue.
Inside, I was dead. I wanted it all to end, yet some stubborn flicker of life remained, clinging and dragging out the torment a little longer.
But the work was not done. The earth gaped with black teeth, the broken body of the woman I loved clutched within its jaw.
I couldn’t stop watching as Sylvie slowly disappeared, and something in me died with her.
The woman I loved was gone, and I was the one burying her.
I was alone with my grief. Alone with the finality of death—all while the monster who’d brought it upon us stood there, admiring the late blooms.